Department store C&A has been given five days to remove t-shirts and jeans with logos which resemble the upmarket urban brand G-star from shops all over Europe.

If it fails, the family-owned firm will have to pay a fine of €10,000 a day to G-star for copyright infringment, a court in The Hague ruled this week.
The C&A own-brand clothing uses the tag D STR. The court said the company ‘appeared to have crept as far as possible towards G-star’ and to ‘boost its own attractiveness’ by its similarity to the G-star brand.
Street

The court rejected C&A’s assertion that shoppers associate STR with the English word ‘street’. But it did agree with the company’s claim that clothing printed with DSTR, without a hyphen, could be seen as short for ‘district’ and did not have to be removed.
According to G-star lawyer Christian de Bil, the controversial clothing accounts for around one-third of C&A’s mens’ line. C&A says only a small part of the collection is affected, the Financieele Dagblad reports.
Dutch company G-star won copyright claims earlier this year against H&M, the paper says.